We're down with XBMC —

Third party launches “end-user friendly” XBMC release for Android

"Friendly" release includes hardware accelerated video decoding.

The XBMCAndroid team has announced a "fully functional" release version of XBMC for Android devices.

This particular iteration of XBMC has been customized to offer hardware accelerated video decoding, which the original version of XBMC doesn't natively support. That new feature means users can hook up their Android device to an external video player.

XBMC started out as a media center application for the first-generation Xbox game console. As the popularity of set-top boxes grew, the application became more widely used and—because of its open source nature—gained a lot of popularity. Services like Plex Media and Boxee all make use of XBMC, and now any Android device can, too.

If you'd like to check out XBMC for Android yourself, you can follow the step-by-step instructions for this "user-friendly" release at the website.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

If by end-user friendly they mean "really small buttons," and "re-learn the keyboard," then yeah, the headline and announcement are accurate. Also: This is clearly a custom build. It says XAF Custom Build when you start it up. But who cares.

Nobody is "hooking their Android device to an external media player" for this. They reference using the app MX Player to do the hardware acceleration. MX Player is "external" to the XBMC app, not the Android device itself.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

Awesome meta data scraping and crazy plugin support? Not to mention an amazing remote control app in case you want to connect one device to the TV (e.g. cheap Android set-top box, smartphone w/ HDMI, Raspberry Pi, HTPC) while controlling it with another phone/tablet.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

You can also configure XBMC to use a shared SQL database. That way you could share the same library between multiple devices. You could, for example, begin watching a movie on your computer, stop it, and then pick it up at the exact same moment on your Android tablet.

I've used plex on Android for years now. It runs on a server at work and let's me play all media on any device, anywhere. Plex is based on xbmc source, so if you're looking for this type of capability, try it.

Uhh, could we ask for even just a cursory check of facts before launching an article? I mean, THIS. IS. A. NON-OFFICIAL. CLIENT.

We've taken "official" out of the headline and will update as necessary.

"XBMC Launches..." should be reworded a bit too... you had my hopes up that they actually decided to officially port the release over.

But I've been running a version of XBMC that someone ported for Android on my Nexus 7 for awhile now. This is just another, worse clone. (Needs MX Media Player? The whole point of XBMC is that it works out of the box with everything.)

Been running xbmc one an original chipped xbox for what seems like a decade or two, Had to switch it out for video lately as the old xbox doesn't do mkv , h.26 or other newer formats but still use it as a break out box for my music as it plays everything and has actually got a pretty amazing visualiser for my old crt. Even have it running on an couple old cracked screen imacs in the garage and workshop.Old Frankenstein'd tech is beautiful, and so is xbmc

Continuing on from what the other have said this is an unofficial build and replaces the core media player of XBMC with something else making XBMC just a UI shell, all the benefits of XBMC's media player are removed.

Please but unofficial in the title of the headline it still sounds like this is a legitimate release when it is not.

Android has a raft of problems that prevent universal hardware decoding & the XBMC team are working on it.

I expect this kind of junk from Engadget, but not Ars Technica. This has NOTHING to do with Team XBMC and isn't any kind of official build at all. This is also just a crappy patched version that uses an external video player, which has been possible for months now.

If you read the page at the link, there is a version for "NEON". That is the signal processing instruction set of the Cortex-A8 (Beagleboard XM and I think the Panda). The arm processors are pretty worthless without NEON.

I've run XBMC for about two years on a D525+ion2 under windows. IIRC, netflix needs silverlight or moonlight, which isn't avilable for Android or Linux. Of course you don't have to use netflix with XBMC.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

The main aim of XBMC for Android is for set-top-boxes on a TV. XBMC is all about the 10-foot-interface. Getting XBMC on phones/tablets is a side effect of that. It really doesn't make much sense for a phone, but for tablets it's kind of a neat feature since you can use all the XBMC add-ons and such. Even then, it's mostly for the living room TV.

The headline and article are still wrong. If I hadn't read the comments above, I would have come away with an incorrect understanding or the state of xbmc for android. In fact, the article made me less informed than if I had never read it.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

You are thinking only phones. Android plugged into a TV is the reason this rocks.

Can anyone explain to me the point of running something like XBMC, rather than using, say ES File Explorer to select files that then play in MX Player, or a similar dedicated video player? I've downloaded XBMC and I'm honestly perplexed as to what it adds other than a clunky interface?

Plex takes the 10-foot interface of XBMC and adds internet streaming, re-compression to any device: PC, Android, iOS, Linux. You set up the server on Windows, OSx or Linux with all your downloaded/ripped media. You then install the client on your favorite devices. The clients log into the server and provide a beautiful XBMC-like interface to your media. Think of it as your very own personal Netflix, except it plays all your media, and also has plug-ins for various internet video streams, such as the Daily Show, PBS, etc.

It aggregates and streams your content, in other words. If your device supports a given compression type/container, it will simply stream the file. If the container is wrong but the compression is supported, it will re-mux to a supported container. If neither is supported, it will re-compress the entire file for your device on the fly. This allows you to dump a bunch of random AVIs into your server and they will all play.

So for example, when I am in an airport, I'll watch Game of Thrones episodes on my phone. When at home, I'll watch on my PC. The advantage over ES File Explorer is, of course, that you don't have to copy the files to each device that you want play the files on, and that you don't have to recompress unsupported formats, and that you can have terabytes of files.

The PC client is free, as is the server. The Android and iOS clients are both, I think, $5.

It really, really really kicks ass and is a breeze to set up. Your server doesn't even need a static IP if you use myPlex.

Indeed, the last sentence of this post mentions the "official website", and then links to a third party website. The only official source for xbmc is xbmc.org, and binaries for Android have been available for months.

As for "user friendly" release, what they (xbmchub/xbmcandroid) mean with this is that they preinstall piracy add-ons, change the skin into something ugly, and use an external player to play certain content. All of this is possible with the official xbmc builds found at xbmc.org. The only reason xbmchub and xbmcandroid exist is that we (Team XBMC / XBMC Foundation) do not allow piracy on our official website.

Yeah, totally unofficial release from some other group. If you want an official release, RC3 of the most current build is available from here. When they are ready for final release it will be put up on the Play Store.

I love XMBC. Got a raspberry pi last month and XMBC up and running on it. Couldn't be happier with it. Now if only my satellite provider didn't suck so bad with their walled garden approach.

I did the same setup with a Windows Home Server backing it up with 16TB of data (8TB redundant). I have collected a lot of DVDs over the years, and it is nice to have everything in a central digital repository

I was amazed at how great XBMC is on the pi. A little slow for some of the content pulls from the web (like the youtube plugin), but I think that will get faster with the next pi release. Once something is playing though, its smooth as anything.

I wanted to use xbmc to replace my set top boxes but the lack of live tv support is a deal killer for me. Any chance the xbmc people would ever put together a live tv component that works w cablecard? I'd pay for that in a heartbeat especially since wmc seems to be winding down.

Indeed, the last sentence of this post mentions the "official website", and then links to a third party website. The only official source for xbmc is xbmc.org, and binaries for Android have been available for months.

As for "user friendly" release, what they (xbmchub/xbmcandroid) mean with this is that they preinstall piracy add-ons, change the skin into something ugly, and use an external player to play certain content. All of this is possible with the official xbmc builds found at xbmc.org. The only reason xbmchub and xbmcandroid exist is that we (Team XBMC / XBMC Foundation) do not allow piracy on our official website.

I wanted to use xbmc to replace my set top boxes but the lack of live tv support is a deal killer for me. Any chance the xbmc people would ever put together a live tv component that works w cablecard? I'd pay for that in a heartbeat especially since wmc seems to be winding down.

Haven't looked at XBMC in a long while but somewhere in my memory it tells me it could hook with a MythTV back end, but it could have been limited to the DVR part and not live TV.

Indeed, the last sentence of this post mentions the "official website", and then links to a third party website. The only official source for xbmc is xbmc.org, and binaries for Android have been available for months.

As for "user friendly" release, what they (xbmchub/xbmcandroid) mean with this is that they preinstall piracy add-ons, change the skin into something ugly, and use an external player to play certain content. All of this is possible with the official xbmc builds found at xbmc.org. The only reason xbmchub and xbmcandroid exist is that we (Team XBMC / XBMC Foundation) do not allow piracy on our official website.

We will not disallow using any type of add-on with XBMC, but we won't include add-ons like the ones I mentioned in the official add-on repository, or allow linking to them and discussion about it on our own forums.

So it's perfectly fine with us that others (like xbmchub) have created a website that provides a platform for these things.

But what is not fine is that they send out press notes stating that their site is the official source of XBMC for Android, and state that they provide the first stable and user-friendly release of XBMC for Android. That's just complete rubbish. Not only because XBMC is user-friendly already the way we release it, but mainly because they repackaged our last beta or release candidate (which has known bugs), hooked up some external players (which XBMC can do by default), changed the skin to include their logo and added an add-on repository with add-ons that we don't allow. People will think that we (Team XBMC) released a buggy piece of software, created to download (possibly) illegal content easily, and we will not allow that.

I wanted to use xbmc to replace my set top boxes but the lack of live tv support is a deal killer for me. Any chance the xbmc people would ever put together a live tv component that works w cablecard? I'd pay for that in a heartbeat especially since wmc seems to be winding down.

Haven't looked at XBMC in a long while but somewhere in my memory it tells me it could hook with a MythTV back end, but it could have been limited to the DVR part and not live TV.

Unfortunately Myth can't handle cable card encryption either. It only works with copy freely channels, most of my HD channels aren't copy freely. I understand that end to end encryption for cable card wouldn't be free but it'd be nice if they could come up with some sort of protected path option to buy, even if they are not for profit.

I wanted to use xbmc to replace my set top boxes but the lack of live tv support is a deal killer for me. Any chance the xbmc people would ever put together a live tv component that works w cablecard? I'd pay for that in a heartbeat especially since wmc seems to be winding down.

Haven't looked at XBMC in a long while but somewhere in my memory it tells me it could hook with a MythTV back end, but it could have been limited to the DVR part and not live TV.

Unfortunately Myth can't handle cable card encryption either. It only works with copy freely channels, most of my HD channels aren't copy freely. I understand that end to end encryption for cable card wouldn't be free but it'd be nice if they could come up with some sort of protected path option to buy, even if they are not for profit.

Ahh yes, forgot about that. Not sure exactly what would be required but I suspect a significant portion of it would be cooperation from the cable/content provider.

I've got a SiliconDust tuner and it works great. The hardest part was that the regular phone number for cable issue takes you to people only lightly trained for MCard activation but the Silicondust site did have a different phone number where the people were trained better and it worked great.

My request from XBMC would be for a live tv software option that's cablecard compatible. The silicondust tuner gets me a signal but only Windows Media Center is authorized to work with the encrypted channels. XBMC is more customizable and free so I'd really have liked to gone XBMC instead of Windows Media Center on Windows 8. I wonder what the cost would be to make a program and get it through cablecard cert that could be skinned by XBMC and Myth to do live tv outside of windows media center. It seems that if Cyberlink can charge over $80 for a blu ray player someone could come up with a live cablecard compatible option and make a killing if it worked on Linux and Windows.